Why was Shikha Dalmia 'cancelled'?

by George J. Dance

Reason Foundation senior analyst, and well-known magazine columnist, Shikha Dalmia has been let go by Reason. As yesterday's Daily Beast headline has it: "Anti-‘Cancel Culture’ Reason Magazine Accused of Canceling Columnist for Being Too Anti-Trump." Let the Beast tell the story: 

"After 15 years, the curtains came down for me at Reason today. My views, I was told, had become too out-of-step with those of the organization," Shikha Dalmia announced Tuesday evening in a Facebook post.... The Reason veteran further suggested that her demise came as a result of complaints from the Reason Foundation’s donors — many of whom are also big donors to Republicans and conservative think tanks.... 

Reason editor-in-chief Katherine Mangu-Ward publicly commented on Dalmia’s post, replying, "I disagree with your characterization of our parting, but certainly won’t get into it here on your page." And in an internal memo sent to staffers, obtained and reviewed by The Daily Beast, Mangu-Ward announced Dalmia’s departure on Tuesday evening: “Today is Shikha’s last day, after 15 years at Reason. It has been an honor to work with a person of such tremendous journalistic talent and deep libertarian conviction. Her contributions to Reason have been enormous, especially in the area of immigration policy. This change has been in the works for a while, and I wish her great luck in her next phase.

Mangu-Ward refuses to discuss personnel issues with the media. Which leaves us only Dalmia's interpretation, which is: "I had a staunch and uncompromising anti-Trump voice calling out his authoritarian tendencies unambiguously. That this made many libertarians uncomfortable raises all kinds of interesting questions about the state of the liberty movement." Furthermore, "Defending my work to donors and stakeholders had evidently made me too much of a liability."

I am sure that is how Dalmia sees it; but she is hardly an impartial witness. Even the Beast writer had some trouble with her explanation, pointing out that "Reason has excoriated the president’s trade wars, scorned his calls to crack down on social-media outlets because they 'censor' his fact-free missives, and called out his nativist immigration policies including family separations.... It is unclear how Dalmia’s expressly anti-Trump views would have fallen outside Reason’s 'big-tent understanding' of libertarianism." Dalmia's viewpoint, as the Reason Foundation's immigration expert, was an integral part of the magazine's messaging. 

Nor does Reason reflect any general pro-Trump bias. In this year's poll of "How Will Reason Staffers Vote?", 11 writers chose Jo Jorgensen, 6 chose not to vote, 4 chose Biden, 1 was still undecided, and 1 chose Trump as the 'lesser evil'. (That last was Bob Poole, who runs the Reason Foundation – he and Dalmia may have exchanged words on Trump. But that is his belief, not what anonymous 'donors' tell him to say.) And that list does not include other Reason associates, like Ilya Somin of the prestigious Volokh Society legal blog hosted on Reason's website, who this year went full Bidenista. 

Full what? I made up the "Bidenista" term to be provocative; in fact, Bidenistas do not care a fig for Joe Biden. They are the voters, of all parties, who decided the most important thing this election was to vote Democrat to remove Trump from office – basically, people who bought into Trump's narcissistic narrative that U.S. politics is all about him (when in fact he is no more consequential than, say, Biden). Note that Trump is a narcissist, but not "selfish" - it is not his actual self that he cares about, but his public personality, his reputation or image. He made himself a star with that image on The Apprentice, and used that program's ratings to make himself the star of the 2016 Republican TV debates. That's how he got to be President. Enough about him. 

There are millions of Republicans (mainly new blood) who idolize that image. There are also millions who loathe it as the symbol of all that is evil. The former I've called "Trumptards"; the latter are the "Bidenistas". Both groups suffer from what has been labelled Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS): both wrongly believe Trump's line that his image is the most important thing in American politics. For no other reason than their TDS, both groups have spent this election campaigning against Jo Jorgensen and the Libertarian Party (LP). 

Dalmia herself went full Bidenista during the campaign, writing in The Week that "civic duty as a libertarian requires me to help defeat President Trump by casting my ballot for the only candidate who can defeat him: Joe Biden." (That column, which did not appear in Reason, may have been submitted there and rejected.) In the Washington Post she wrote: 

But even a lifelong Libertarian like me realizes that this time around, voting for my party’s ticket could only diminish my vote against Trump. In the face of Trump’s xenophobic demagoguery and the Democratic base flirting with socialism, Libertarian Party delegates complacently put forth a ticket of ideologically rigid unknowns who are selling theories of libertarianism, as if this campaign were unfolding in a vacuum — or a college dorm.

After the election, she hectored Libertarian voters too stupid or gullible to do their identical civic duty – "What’s been disappointing is how many libertarians actually didn’t see through Trump's authoritarianism, how much they allowed him to tarnish Biden as a socialist, ignoring how aggressively economically interventionist he himself was" – in an interview headlined, "Republicans aren’t the only party to be changed by Trump, says libertarian writer.' Sure, that's just one expression of opinion, but consider: Had Trump won, all the Bidenistas would still be screaming it.

No, Ms Dalmia: the Libertarian Party has not been changed by Trump. Jo Jorgensen's presidential campaign, with its obvious similarity to Harry Browne's 1990s campaigns, is enough to show that. Nor has Reason been changed; the magazine has consistently judged all presidential candidates regardless of party not by donors' whims but by the standard of "big-tent libertarianism," and that continues to be its standard. What has been changed by Trump is you. Donald Trump turned you into a Bidenista and an anti-Libertarian. 

If anyone connected with Reason was "uncomfortable" with the anti-Libertarian Bidenista message, that was more likely to have been (1) Libertarian supporters and (2) believers in 'big-tent libertarianism' regardless of party. Since the LP's founding, some libertarians, from Sam Konkin III to Murray Rothbard (initially) to 2016's Liberty Herald, have tried to build a 'libertarian movement' from which the LP was excluded. Reason to its credit never had anything to do with that tendency to divide libertarians, which is one reason it has succeeded as the flagship magazine of the larger libertarian movement. Reason has a role to play in criticizing LP candidates and officers, but there should be no room in it for explicity anti-Libertarian messaging. (Except, as with Mr. Solmin's Bidenista turn, as part of a debate, balancing a pro-Libertarian message.) 

I have appreciated Shikha Dalmia's work at the Reason Foundation and Reason magazine. I hope that another libertarian think tank offers her a position to continue that work. There is far more to the libertarian movement than the Libertarian Party or Reason, and no reason (pun intended) for them or for Dalmia to worry about each other. I wish her all the luck in the world. But I believe that her view of events should not pass unchallenged. 

Left & right misuse libertarian ideas for partisan gain

How conservatives and liberals are both hijacking libertarian principles for partisan gain -  Shikha Dalmia, The Week:

July 6, 2015 - "Libertarianism has been at the forefront of the gay rights cause from the get-go. Reason magazine, the flagship libertarian publication where I work, has always maintained that the government has no business regulating — much less criminalizing — what two people do behind closed doors so long as they don't hurt anyone....  As Cato Institute's David Boaz points out, libertarians were making arguments in support of gay marriage way before the cause became hip among progressives. The Libertarian Party demanded equality for gays back in 1972, when the Democratic vice presidential nominee was still referring to gays as 'queers,' and endorsed gay marriage in 1976....

"But now, in the wake of the gay marriage revolution, conservatives and progressives alike are turning to libertarian ideas — and both for the wrong reasons.

"Progressives are doing it to settle a vendetta against religious conservatives and reverse-persecute them for their private beliefs. And religious conservatives are trying to refight the wars of the sexual revolution.

"Let's begin with the left. As if on cue, no sooner did the ruling come out than progressives such as Felix Salmon started calling for scrapping the tax-exempt status of religious non-profits that preach against gay marriage, just as conservatives had feared would happen.... But since denying some faith-based organizations a tax exemption because of their faith would be a violation of their First Amendment rights ... Salmon hinted he would be fine with the 'libertarian' solution to 'abolish tax exemption for all religious organizations'....

"However, today's opposition to gay marriage ... is arguably more prevalent among blacks and Latinos than religious whites. Yet their churches perform vital services for minority children, offering a semblance of stability in a sea of poverty and family breakdown. Taking away their tax exemption ... would make gays-rights activists look like fanatical Jacobins willing to sacrifice living, breathing humans to satisfy a thin-skinned need to purge every last vestige of anti-gay animus.

 "But progressives are not the only ones misusing libertarian ideas when it comes to gay marriage. Conservatives are ... already looking for ways to flout the Supreme Court ruling. Since Justice Kennedy ruled that states can't selectively withhold marriage licenses from gay couples ... Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican presidential aspirant from Kentucky, is calling on them to simply get out of the marriage business. What's more, Texas and Mississippi are heeding his call and have announced they might stop issuing marriage licenses altogether.

"Privatizing marriage is a long-standing libertarian idea whose whole purpose was to foster John Stuart Mill's 'thousand experiments in living.' Pulling it out now to deny gays an opportunity to get married — in a sense, keeping alive discrimination by privatizing it — will not just pervert the idea but also discredit it."

Read more: http://theweek.com/articles/564163/how-conservatives-liberals-are-both-hijacking-libertarian-principles-partisan-gain
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Libertarians and Ebola

How Libertarians Would Handle an Ebola Outbreak in Texas - Victoria Bekiempis, Newsweek:

October 2, 2014 - "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the U.S. on Tuesday, in Dallas, Texas.... Libertarianism generally advocates against government involvement in healthcare — so if the 135 Libertarians running for office in the Lone Star State this November were elected, would they want the government to fight the disease?

"The answer is more nuanced than one might expect: Most Libertarians interviewed by Newsweek agreed government should intervene to protect public health in exceptional circumstances, but said intervention would have to be very careful and limited—and, perhaps, that it is better executed by the private sector.

"Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst at Reason Foundation, the Libertarian think tank that publishes Reason magazine, explains to Newsweek the starting point of most Libertarian belief is a limited government that provides 'essential' functions, such as national defense. But in certain circumstances —if a person had a deadly communicable disease and refused to isolate himself, for example —governmental intervention could be considered essential....

"Kathie Glass, a Libertarian candidate for Texas governor, says that forced isolation is OK if it’s absolutely necessary. 'If you are a threat to other innocent people, that’s an act of aggression,' she says. 'When someone has fatal disease, a deadly communicable disease, that’s an act of aggression to go around and expose other people to it.' But, she adds, we should be careful that we are not just wantonly violating someone’s liberty.

"With regard to a governmental public health infrastructure, there doesn’t seem to be active Libertarian opposition to entities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — 'I don’t think any Libertarian loves the CDC, but there are just bigger fish to fry,' explains Dalmia — but they generally favor the private sector’s handling of healthcare.

Carla Howell, National Libertarian Party Political Director, says 'governmental bureaucracies' involved with epidemic control are ineffective compared to private and voluntary efforts, in addition to costing too much money and violating individual rights. 'The sole purpose of government is to protect our life, liberty and property from harm caused by others in those few instances where the private sector cannot do a better job,' Howell writes in an e-mail to Newsweek. 'Containing Ebola in Africa is best left to private charities such as Doctors Without Borders rather than the NIH [National Institutes of Health] or the CDC.'"

Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/libertarians-ebola-texas-274822
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What 'libertarian moment' critics are missing

What 'libertarian moment' scoffers and critics get wrong - The Week - Shikha Dalmia:

August 18, 2014 - "In this time of political polarization, it's rare to find a moment of comity. But that's exactly what we've found in the wake of Robert Draper's recent New York Times Magazine feature suggesting that the 'libertarian moment' might have finally arrived in America.

"Not only did both liberals and conservatives dismiss the claim, they did so for similar reasons: Young Americans care more about their personal freedom than their elders but less about economic freedom.... Their main evidence — confirmed in a Reason-Rupe poll conducted by my colleague, Emily Ekins that Draper prominently cites — is that Millennials want government to offer, among other things, guaranteed health care (69 percent) and college education (54 percent), a higher federal minimum wage (71 percent), and higher taxes on the wealthy (66 percent).

"Worse, Ekins found that 54 percent of Millennials support a 'larger government providing more services,' far more than older Americans....

"But ... the strong support that Millennials express for 'large government and more services' drops 19 percentage points — back to the natural average of Americans as a whole — when the phrase 'with higher taxes' is added to the question....

"One reason why Millennials are less bothered by such economic interventionism than their elders is that they are less affected by it. The rise of the internet economy has offered them an escape from stultifying regulations and onerous taxes that govern traditional brick-and-mortar industries....

"But this happy arrangement where they stay out of government's way and the government stays out of theirs can't last forever. The crushing debt of the massive entitlement state will inevitably cause Uncle Sam and states to try to tax the internet, especially as the revenues from Main Street businesses decline. Likewise, city governments won't simply sit by and let internet services render their meticulously created regulatory structures obsolete....

"Millennial quiescence on economic interventionism is therefore deceptive. When they feel the government's heavy hand closing in, they'll slap it away, just as they are doing now with their pot plants and doobies. Pot legalization might just be a harbinger of things to come on the economic front."

Read more: http://theweek.com/article/index/266476/what-libertarian-moment-scoffers-and-critics-get-wrong
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